#protodermis

[toaimahordika]

Can you run DOOM in a pool of energized protodermis?

[rahiwatching]

Liquid Protodermis seem similar to water at first glance, but it actually has some very strange and often contradictory properties when you look into it. In this video, we take a closer look at those properties and establish a theory to explain those contradictions.

This theory includes maths, material science and fluid dynamics - but also hot tubs and Rahi poop!?

Liquid Protodermis may be strange, but theories about it may prove to be even stranger…

New Bionicle Science investigations every month. What part of Bionicle lore do you want to see investigated next?

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[cha5otic]

Pretty much everything in TMU tbh

[0m3g45n1p3r4lph4]

Happy second Bionicle day everyone!

I've been thinking a lot about Protodermis lately - it's origins, intelligence, capabilities, and use cases. I'd like to share my notes, theories, and shouldercanons here. I've got a lot to say though, so I'm gonna segment this into parts, starting here with the origins of the material and how that may have influenced the entirety of Magnan civilization and life itself.

A Study on Protodermis, Part 1: Origins

It's been described that Energized Protodermis comes from the core of Spherus Magna. I think that fact is often glossed over - the planetary core is not molten rock like our own, but a liquid metal with seemingly unknowable properties. But a metallic core isn't so unrealistic, and at that depth the heat and pressure would melt it for sure.

No, there's a much more important detail I'd like to propose. I think that Energized Protodermis sparked life on Spherus Magna, much in the same way Water did on Earth - allowing minerals to develop into proteins, into single-cellular organisms and eventually multicellular ones. This is nearly explicitly backed in text when a leak of EP on the island of Mata Nui causes barren soil to grow with diverse biomes of plant life as perfect wild habitats for both native organic animals and now-wild Rahi. But I think this can be examined even further.

The organic beings on Spherus Magna have such high metallic content in their bodies that their bones are almost entirely metal - a bone tool for them is usable as a durable sword that can be sharpened and polished, resulting in metallic clangs when clashed. I think this is a direct result of life spawning from liquid metal instead of water, in the same way we have such immense water contents in our bodies.

This "spark of life", however it works, somehow carried into the material itself. It's entirely possible it developed sentience much slower than the rest of life on the planet, and I'll get into why as I discuss theories on its capabilities and powers, but this would also very well explain why the Great Beings never knew it to be sentient - it genuinely wasn't before the Shattering, or at least too early in that development.

TL;DR: Energized Protodermis is the living Primordial Soup of Spherus Magna

So Energized Protodermis starts life on the planet and itself begins to spread, creating what likely started as underground springs before any reached the then-vibrant surface. Considering I still think it's alive at that point, the expansion and springing of the liquid is very likely a natural growth - possibly even a search for material to consume like food. Is it possible that this is what happens when Energized Protodermis destroys what it's not destined to transform? I think it's very likely. Matter consumed and converted into near pure energy, with maybe a little of an idea of it remaining within the developing intelligence. In fact, it's also possible that the consumption of organic matter it helped spawn is the major reason it developed intelligence in the first place, like how certain multicellular organisms developed these other functions by consuming things that had certain functions and integrating them instead of fully destroying them. Then as life around EP develops, evolves, and becomes smarter, EP consumes that and begins to develop similarly.

From nothing you came, into nothing you shall become, and the nothing will become more like you were.

[writerfromtheshore]

Could Annona Have Given EP it’s sentience?

On some research on another topic, I came across these few tidbits in the Farshtey Feed, a Bzpower summary of answers from ask Greg:

What I’m gathering from this, chronological ages of the ancient Spherus Magnans are as follows:

Oldest: Annona

Middle Child: Great Beings

Youngest: Energized protodermis entity

I’m thinking that Annona could have given the Energized protodermis sentience and created the entity within it. It has the power to bestow psionics powers according to her BS01 page. It can also teleport. Annona could have given the substance intelligence and life.

Why it did it? That’s a whole other ball of yarn. She could have done this with the substance as an experiment or in order to find some sort of dream food. Intelligent beings dream, and for Annona that means food. Or in an attempt to transform itself- she could have seen what it did and wanted to become transformed herself. A result could have been her/it not being transformed but EP gaining powers.

Thoughts?

[sepublic]

Secondary Elements make no sense

            The introduction of secondary elements beyond Light and Shadow (which are framed as existing on a whole different level anyway) is weird, because it kind of breaks the lore on Protodermis seals. They’re first introduced at the end of 2002, when the Toa combine their elements to defeat the Bahrag; In MNOG, Whenua describes protodermis as the ‘stuff of life’, and it’s what all living biomechanicals are made up of.

         Thematically this makes sense; The idea that all of the elements come together to create the very matter that living beings are made of. The Toa/Turaga/Matoran, who are themselves made of Protodermis, are essentially channeling a facet of this substance in the form of one of its component elements. You can even add in some refraction symbolism and compare it to Light, how it can refract into different colors as Protodermis splits into and combines from different elements, each associated with a color; It further props up Takanuva on an aesthetical and thematic level, because Light is symbolically the united culmination of the six elements, hence Takanuva being the one to defeat Makuta, hence Light being associated with Mata Nui, whom our Toa protect. It makes sense that what is essentially a Christ-figure would also bear the same element of the lore’s God, and the Toa Nuva in turn serve Takanuva; It’s all about being more than the sum of its parts, befitting the Kaita and Lego medium.

         But then comes Sound and Gravity; Sound is technically the first to be canonized, but in terms of story appearance, doesn’t show up until after Gravity’s mention in Time Trap. In the story, Lariska gives an anecdote of how she killed a Toa of Gravity by preparing for his powers, and then later Krakua himself shows up. This suddenly messes up the worldbuilding and thematic lore for Protodermis; Isn’t it supposed to be the representation of all elements, of life itself? So why can it be made without Gravity, or Sound??? Then we get other elements, and it’s suddenly eight secondary elements, outnumbering the primary six. The existence of secondary elements is baffling;

         Suddenly, the way Protodermis seals are created is rather arbitrary; It’s not all of the elements that represent nature being combined, but rather any combination of six separate ones, out of fourteen possible options. You can have two teams, each of six entirely different elements, and yet they still create the same Protodermis…? The lore is suddenly messed up and it raises questions… Furthermore, why is Metru Nui, the most important place in the universe, not including Matoran of these secondary elements? Why is there even a distinction of some elements as ‘secondary’ in the first place, shouldn’t they all exist on the same level??? Why are there only Toa Mata for six out of fourteen elements, that’s less than half; These are the Toa meant to save Mata Nui, they should represent all of the elements!

         It’s just freaking weird. And it doesn’t help that most of our lore and actual story content on the secondary elements is downright minimal; Sure we have Word of God from Greg, but with how the secondary elements are so hardly fleshed out and barely appear, what’s even the point of including them if it breaks the lore that way? And it’s such a casual, offhand inclusion that isn’t really necessary, especially when the element itself isn’t actually used; Zaktan doesn’t need to have killed a Toa of Plasma, because he never uses his power of Plasma. Hakann and Vezok don’t need to encounter a Toa of Plantlife, because he never uses his powers anyway. 

        They could be Toa of any of the previously-established elements and it’d make sense, and NOT mess with the worldbuilding. It’s bizarre. Why open such a huge can of worms that is a new element (and thus a type of Toa/Matoran), for something so frivolous; Why do that if you won’t actually follow through on and commit to this? Why turn this power into a fully-recognized Toa element??? It makes a lot of sense from a meta perspective for these elements to exist, but the way they’re incorporated later on into the actual story, thus interfering with established canon, is downright baffling. All this does is create and highlight a painfully obvious absence in-universe, which is more of note than their actual existence to begin with.

[bionicle-forever]

how dangerous do you think it is for a non-protodermis based lifeform to consume aforementioned protodermis?

[lekorojams]

DESTINY

It was the nut the Great Beings couldn’t crack.

The string they couldn’t pull.

The law they couldn’t comprehend.

All the Great Beings ever wanted was control. Not simply control over a tribe or a planet, they knew better than that. They thought bigger. They knew that control came from knowledge. And the ultimate knowledge would naturally garner the ultimate control. So they threw themselves into their research, dissecting the universe, probing its fundamental laws, gaining further knowledge and power with each new discovery.

And yet, they hit a snag. When they had probed so deeply they thought they almost had the ultimate truth in their hands, they encountered a property of that truth that they couldn’t understand. It appeared first as a sort of pull. A force that guided the universe towards certain states.

Was it inexorable fate? Did it mean, as many of the Great Beings had suspected, that free will was an illusion?

No, it didn’t quite work that way. That would have been simple, understandable, acceptable even. The universe was not that kind to the Great Beings. The universe, it seemed, wanted to play a game. It wasn’t fate, it was . . .

It became the question that filled the Great Beings’ minds day and night. What was it?

First they went to their original teacher. The Great Beings had once conquered the Dream Eater to gain their genius. Perhaps they could extract the truth from the Dream Eater about . . .

Annona laughed loud and long at their question. And in her impossible eyes, the Great Beings saw fear.

So they returned to their workshop and kept up the research, no wiser than before. As the Great Beings delved deeper into this this new thread of reality they discovered that it just grew more complicated and frustrating. It was indescribable and unjustifiable, it contradicted itself constantly. And no matter how maddening it became, it was impossible to look away from, because it always seemed to be posing the question: what is your . . .

But they made no progress. Even as their obsession deepened, the Great Beings could not find even a scrap of sense or consistency that wasn’t torn down by the very next discovery.  Not even the laws of randomness applied. The truth that they knew must be there always felt like it was just out of reach. Many abandoned the subject in disgust, returning to the safety of technological innovation.

And in the northern frost, up sprung the pool.

The Great Beings knew immediately that something had happened. The world just felt different when they woke up one day. But it took them a few days to receive word from the source. An abnormal seismic event that had the Element Lords of Ice and Earth acting strangely. Whispers circulating among the tribes.

They got a sample as quickly as they could. It was . . .

It seemed that this new substance was a physical distillation of the very same law of reality they had been studying. Which was impossible. But the Great Beings had found themselves growing disturbingly used to the impossible. As they continued to experiment with the substance, their thoughts became preoccupied with the same irrationality. They tried to put it out of mind. Fundamental properties of the universe weren’t sentient. They didn’t intentionally manifest as pseudo-matter and place themselves so as to taunt living beings.

Did they?

Word spread quickly among the tribes. Everyone knew about the mysterious pool in the north. Everyone had heard or, if they were unlucky, seen what happened to those who touched the surface. They knew of the monstrous transformations, the rending flesh and splintering bone that reshaped itself like clay, the increasingly strange and metallic screams that ring to this day in the ears of the witnesses who heard them. And those were the lucky ones, the cases where the pool’s effects could be understood by the mortal mind. Some who had touched it were just gone without a trace.

Yes, everyone on Spherus Magna knew about the pool.

And it pulled them.

People of every tribe, some hundreds of miles away, would be plagued by the uneasy thought of its existence at all times of the day. Agori would wake in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, the image of the pool’s shimmering surface burned into their mind’s eye even if they had never seen it before. Like an oil slick on the fabric of reality. They would stand at their windows and look at the starry sky, and grip the windowsill so hard their fingers bled to stop themselves from walking away towards the northern horizon.

Come, whispered the pool, don’t you want to see what’s in store? I am here for you and only you. Come to me. Take the dive. Accept your . . .

Ask a Magnan today why the Core War was fought, and they will tell you it was over power. “The pool in the north held a substance that could be turned into a weapon,” they will say. “The Element Lords coveted it. They wanted to use it to conquer each other.”

Such is the legend they tell to save themselves from the memory of a truth they can’t understand. No one truly knows why the Core War started, but deep in their hearts they know it was never really about power. It was about the pull.

As the war raged outside their fortresses, the Great Beings continued their research. No longer did they find joy in the work of discovery; all that was left was the all-consuming need to understand. Gradually, day by day, experiment by painful, dangerous, experiment, they began to unlock the secrets of the pool’s contents. They named it. They stabilized it. They purified it. They changed its state. They made things out of it.

They made life out of it.

The ultimate creation, the only thing that had eluded the Great Beings for all of their lives. From the darkness they had dubbed “protodermis” emerged a light of a kind they had never seen before.

A strange light. A light they feared. They named it Ignika.

And when one of their number touched it and was cursed, and then driven insane, they asked him why. “Why did you touch it when you knew it was dangerous? You knew its effects could not be predicted.”

The mad one laughed long and loud at the question. “Well, it had to be done!“ he said. “It had to! I had to! It was my . . .”

They locked him in a tower so they wouldn’t have to hear him anymore.

Impossibilities remained, but the Great Beings had found a hope to cling to. Maybe they didn’t understand the substance, but they could control it. And what better way to exercise their control over it than to build with it? With the new properties they had discovered in protodermis, they would make their greatest creation yet. A machine to fly into the stars and explore, to discover the meaning of its own substance. To discover the truth. And then, once it had found the truth, to bring it back to them. And then, finally, they would know. Finally, they would understand . . .

The Great Machine was large. Larger than the Great Beings expected it to be. Its very foundations stretched to the sky. Within them lay miles of passageways, tons of wires and gears, endless machinery that blotted out the sun. It felt as if the rapidly growing framework warped space around it, to make the pitch black tunnels within spiral on into an endless maze of shadows, larger than the frame that encased it (larger than the planet itself?). Once an Agori made a break for foundations and disappeared into them before the  worker drones could stop him. No one knows why. Perhaps he felt pulled to them. He didn’t come back out. Reports that the drones had detected voices coming from within the maze were ignored.

The Great Beings went one day to their architect slave. Artahka, the maker of the Great Machine. Together, they observed the components he had designed as they were lowered down, down, miles down into the depths of the Machine to be put into place. Artahka smiled. He was proud.

Then the Great Beings asked him what a part’s purpose was.

He looked confused. “I don’t know,” he said, as if it should be obvious that he wouldn’t. “My mask shows me what must be made, and I have the drones make it.” He smiled again. “It is all in the course of . . .”

Oh, how the Great Beings howled at the sound of that.

Oh, how they punished the architect slave for the mere mention of the word. For the first and last time in his life, Artahka knew pain.

He wept, for he did not understand. “Why?” he cried. “Why do you hurt me when I only do what you made me to do?” The Great Beings did not listen.

As the Core War raged around them and the world fell to pieces, they pushed forward.  The machine began to take on a shape at once familiar and strange. The Great Beings hadn’t intended to build it in their own image. As it grew ever larger, they grew less and less sure of why they did what they did. Why build islands? Why simulate soil and weather? Why create domes arched like the sky? It didn’t matter, they were sure this was what they must do.

Every resource they had, every hour of their days, every last scrap of their passion and their sanity, they threw into the construction of the Machine powered by the contents of the pool. It was their final victory against the Great Impossibility, they told themselves. “Look what we have built from that which confounded us!” they said. “Look how we have dissected it, determined its properties, bent it to our whim! With this, we have conquered! With this, we control . . .”

And so they built a living altar to their hated god.

And when Velika, The Riddler, stole away and secretly planted a seed in the minds of their worker drones, even though he knew he would not like the results, he could not tell you why he did it. (Well, it had to be done, he thought to himself. It had to. I had to.)

And when the Machine was launched, the Great Beings dragged themselves back to their decrepit fortresses and vaults, locking themselves away to wait out the apocalypse they had been unable to prepare for. They could not remember or explain why they had done everything they had done over the past year. They were no longer even sure if the Machine would even do what they had made it for. But they knew there was nothing left for them to do now. Only wait.

And when the matoran opened their eyes for the first time onto the universe, they were confused and frightened. And they turned to the Great Machine, and they gave it a new name. And they asked it, “What are we to do? How are we to live? Give us principles to guide us.”

And Mata Nui thought.

And Mata Nui spoke.

UNITY

DUTY

. . .